Li Jin

Li Jin was born in 1958 and after his graduation from the Tianjin Arts and Crafts School in 1977 continued his study at the Academy of Fine Arts where he now also teaches.

Li Jin's works form a significant part of the New Literati movement in Chinese contemporary art which in itself belongs to the New Modernist Ink Painting aesthetic.

Their subject matter is life in all its most pleasurable manifestations—food , wine, and sex as well as bathing, sleeping, and relaxing out of doors.

Two early influences contributed most to Li Jin's witty and lushly hedonistic paintings—his training at the Tianjin Arts and Crafts School where he was encouraged to develop a sophisticated appreciation of design and secondly his exposure to the art of his aunt Zhou Sizong (1939-1996) who was a well known ink painter famous for her voluptuous brush-work and vivid chromatic range.

Li Jin's work is also a good example of the artist's simulation of insouciance, whereas in truth his technique is refined to the point of total brush control.

Rich colour washes and quirky arresting designs characterize his treatment of his semi-autobiographical paintings which catch him at home and at ease with life and wife (?) and child and dog.

He is well-known in the cultural environment of the New China as a connoisseur of the finer things in life, as well as an artist who has recently emerged as one of international stature. His gift for depicting food led to an invitation from his friend the famous artist Fang Lijun to paint the menu for Fang's famous restaurant, South Silk Road.